Troubled robot vacuum-cleaner maker iRobot, abandoned by Amazon after regulators effectively doomed the web giant’s takeover offer, has warned investors it may not survive the next 12 months.
The free market is supposed to make this happen. The problem is that we have also built a system that just generates mountains of junk and e-waste. Because our government is feckless and refuses to actually regulate, ya know, anything with a shareholder attached.
So the Roomba I bought in 2021 is gonna stop working come 2026… Guess I need an open source vacuum now too 😩
I’m glad I waited to replace my old Eufy one. I definitely will not be replacing it with Roomba now.
Haha. Ofc with these prices and features compared to some other good Chinese and other brands roomba is doomed. Like check vacuum wars on YT. Middle model roombas are on par with your typical Chinese brand robots but price is double. Basically, you pay for a brand 🤷.
Why are the Chinese companies not collapsing too? What’s different about irobot that they can’t compete?
I will check them out later! I’ve been wanting a robot vacuum for a while now but I also am wary of Chinese bullshit.
I want a really good one that doesn’t connect to the internet in any way. 👍🏻 Even if that kills some of its smart features.
So my vacuum will likely not work in 12 months. Niiiice.
Their products are like 5 years behind their competitors. It’s inevitable.
Slightly off topic but how are y’all at replacing the parts that get worn out?
I’m still on the 2nd filter it came with and I haven’t replaced any of the brushes, etc.,
I kind of wish I had a maintenance schedule where I just had the parts delivered and replaced them at set intervals rather than having to guess when it’s worn out.
But I also don’t want to overspend.
If you’re using a roomba, the app will typically tell you when to replace your brushes and filter. The filter you can find easy replacements for as well as the little spinning brush. The bigger brushes are harder. You can buy replacements from third party vendors for cheap, but they’re not perfect… and if you have carpeting the roomba will freak out until the third party brushes wear down a bit. After that happens, everything mostly works.
I usually clean out the roomba every week and replace the brushes every 4 months or so. I run mine nightly though (I have kids).
There are a million third party vendors that sell replacements on amazon, just take a look. Though - and I don’t know for sure having not actually read the article - it seems as though you may also need to change out the firmware so you can keep operating it if iRobot’s servers go down, since all the roombas i’m aware of need internet connectivity to operate.
If you’re at the point where you need to start replacing parts, it might be worth starting to look into other brands
My Roomba doesn’t connect to the Internet – I use the clean and dock buttons
It would be great if more smart devices had a LAN-only control mode like my 3D printer, TV and AV receiver.
I would be perfectly happy if my iRobot phone app only worked from inside my network.
Doesn’t apply to iRobot but there are lots of robot vacuums that can be flashed with an open firmware with just a USB UART cable: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
As for the other devices, my 3D printer, projector and AV receiver are all locally controlled.
Big +1 for Valetudo. I use it on a refurbished Roborock S7+ I got on eBay and it’s fantastic.
Make sure to read their disclaimers, they’re really not interested in expanding features, so make double sure it’s sufficient for what you want.
I think it’s just using MQTT, so block network access and use HomeAssistant
Your 3d printer has a NIC?
It’s pretty common for newer 3D printers to have WiFi. Start/stop jobs, monitor cameras, or just to have a more capable UI than the built-in screen. Lots of people add this capability to older printers (or new ones with sucky interfaces) with OctoPrint.
And some brands of 3D printers have started placing those functionalities behind remote servers and paywalls
cough cough Bambu Labs cough cough
At that point, I wouldn’t trust ANY device that cannot be controlled locally, either natively or at least through some hacks.
My cheap Conga robot came with a remote controller. It stopped connecting to its server long ago, but I can still use it. The battery is getting worse and worse, though.
I’m a bit of a diy and repair nerd for damned near anything. I have a near 20 year old roomba 530 model that still works great. Back then and for a good many years roombas were hands down the best bang for your buck. I haven’t recommended them for the past decade. They fell behind in ability and build quality. Let alone any of the privacy concerns stuff. Damned shame.
Mozilla gave them an OK privacy rating. Not great, but not terrible.
You know we can’t really trust Mozilla on the privacy front anymore right?
I don’t believe that is true if you’ve followed the story.
Patiently awaiting Congress to ban any Chinese robot vacuums out of national security risk
Had an old one that kinda works but is a pain. More recently, we splurged on a more modern pet version with Wi-Fi and all the bells.
It was fantastic. And 3 weeks in, couldn’t stay connected to the network even right beside the router and was doing constant very short runs before returning to the dock saying it was full.
Returned it.
Tried several of those vacuums but none really worked that well
Have you tried Roborock? It’s an amazing vacuum and connects very well inside Home Assistant.
Also easy to repair. I got one that’s like 8 years old and I replaced the blower and a sensor and its super easy and the components are cheap.
Not only that, they post the wiring diagrams online and even have a video tear downs.
Here is an example.
Nah I got kids they will kill it on no time
I do too. I just run it when they are in school. I keep the vacuum in my coat closet and open the door when I’m about to run it.
Hmm so this entire trick of setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps appears to be not a viable strategy if anti trust law is enforced?
Hmm as if last 30 years of corpo behavior has been essentially to maintain mega corp dominance via captured regulators and legislators
We got the capitalism alright but where is the free market at, daddy?
setting up companies just to be bought by mega corps
iRobot was originally founded all the way back in 1990 and have sold quite a lot of Roomba vacuums, advancing innovation in home automation along the way. I don’t think anyone can ever say that they set up this company for a quick flip corpo pump and dump.
It was originally at up to leech government funding for “weapons research”. I guess I’m old because nobody here seems to remember that.
Don’t worry, the new strategy is to string a company along with talks of a buyout, then when their cash runs out and they declare bankruptcy, to buy all the assets on fire sale.
Owners of the take over target shoulda worked harder and maybe ate less avocado toast?
fire tablet, fire phone, fire sale!
'member the HP Touchpad? I 'member…
The market is “free” to fuck you and everyone you know on the ass.
Didn’t you know that’s what “free market“ means?
I do, in fact, dislike being fucked on the ass.
I like it, myself, but not when it’s a major global multi billion dollar corporation doing it.
The operative word here is consent haha
That is always the operative word. Except for those who don’t can’t and will never accept that that word exists.
Parasite class and their legal persons sure do have a rapist culture as their MO
It’s not capitalism without exploitation.
oh its free alright. for oligarchs to do whatever the fuck they want.
You just gotta be big enough that you can buy enough people. FAANG is there (though this is Wild West politics nowadays so who the fuck knows what’s gonna happen). But when you own the people writing the laws to control you… they’re not controlling you.
(I know I didn’t contribute shit & just complain but) … isn’t it a bit weird how after all this time there arent any good open sauce diy robot kits?
Like, materials, sensors, brushes, filters, batteries, etc are all cheaply available, a basic board could literally be just cut plywood with the rest is the things mounted on top (who even needs a cover?). And ofc one could mount various weapons mod on it.
I love DIY tech projects and yet I would never go through the effort to make a robot vacuum because vacuuming is already the easiest chore in the house. You kinda just stand there and go swoop swoop swoop a few times. Takes like 3 minutes to do an entire room. As opposed to listening to the robot vacuum rumble around for an hour and do a half ass job, if it even finishes without getting spooked by a shadow thinking it’s a 100ft cliff
Sounds like you don’t have a thick furred dog that sheds multiple coats throughout the year.
We got a roomba as a gift and it has saved so much effort of sweeping/vacuuming the excess of fur on the floors.
Love my husky but damn…
Yeah, people complain about roombas not giving a super deep clean… But they’re really not intended to do so. They’re meant to be a daily maintenance clean. They may not be great for when you dump an entire can of coffee grounds in your carpet… But they’re wonderful when you have a big dog with lots of fur that needs to be vacuumed every single day.
Better to put my efforts toward automating the flipping of light switches and the raising/lowering of window shades
I really don’t like vacuuming, so to me it doesn’t matter how long it takes; I can set it up and then leave the house
Yes, we all need to manage our lives & our shortcomings.
I like vacuum cleaning chore too, but can have periods when my brainhole just won’t register the todo.Got a good deal on a Roomba, I have a shark with HEPA filter and all, very good vacuum. I can vacuum, then let the Roomba run, and it still finds shit. I like it, especially for pet hair. Only thing I don’t like is it’s random pattern, mine doesn’t map the room, refuse to get one with a camera.
Didn’t iRobot put out a DIY robot/vacuum that you could assemble how you wanted?
Yeah, but it didn’t have a vacuum. It was just a development thing.
There is https://valetudo.cloud/ for a lot of existing models, it’s about the closest thing we have.
“for a lot of models” is a bit of an exaggeration. Especially as Xiaomi/Dreame try to actively restrict Valetudo use.
But yes, Valetudo is a great project. I’d just wish there was a manufacturer who would openly endorse it.
I’ve wondered before how large an order would be required to entice a white label manufacturer of robot vacuums into doing a production run of units with Valetudo preinstalled.
I would absolutely buy one if someone could work out a fair business arrangement with the developer and throw the project up on kickstarter.
There are not enough smart-vacuum owners in the world that would make it more profitable to just make the hardware without hoovering up the data that comes with its use.
Oh fuck,
I’m gonnaI might test this.
I’ve never heard of it before, but the more I read the more I like it.Thx!
I have it on a Roborock S5 and it works great, so much more stable than the original firmware that requires an internet connection.
Certain models can be harder to root though, so read through the description and guide thoroughly first.
I have an S5 Max, its a long time I think about switching… but I dunno if its worth it
Yeah if it’s working fine now I wouldn’t bother.
Popular Science had an “open source” robot lawnmower plans in the…80s? I have it somewhere. Old enough that it used deep cycle lead-acid batteries and spinning round dremel blades. No laser to cut the grass, although it did use LEDs for sensors for grass height.
Go ahead and make one then. Nobody is stopping you from being the first.
… I’m that, my best is what is stopping me :(.
I mean, I don’t demand an open source washing machine or dryer either.
Ok, but that would be amazing.
Imagine the ability to actually define your own cycles.
Tho how most are built, that shouldn’t be that hard with a little arduino.
yes but they don’t need a cloud service, neither scanning your home to function
What about LEGO Mindstorms? Does that count?
Another company squandering their patents and market advantage. Reminds me of TiVo.
I love my TiVo. I had to find someone to repair my current unit because it’s an antenna version. They don’t have/make new antenna versions.
This. I know someone who used to work there. They wouldn’t enforce the patents in China to the point where you could drop in Roomba subassemblies in competitor robots and they would still work…
Their products require their app, would this effectively turn their devices useless when the servers die?
I know it supports a single button to start cleaning, but I wonder if that will work properly without being able to call home.
Might be time for people to look for alternatives.
Requires an app? As soon as Amazon bought it, mine has never again connected to an app or the internet.
It usually has a big start button on it’
It technically still works without the app but it loses features that increase the efficiency of the map, tells it where not to clean, scheduled cleaning, etc.
So basically anything that makes it more useful than just doing it yourself.
Everything that makes it better than a generic copy, yes
That’s why I only bought the basic model – didn’t want a cloud company to have a map of my house lying around
I assume this will brick all Roombas past the 800 series. All the scheduling, advanced mapping features etc are hosted on AWS. You’ll be able to press clean to start but that’s pretty much it… That’s unless they open up their software which they probably won’t
If it bricks my i7 room a I’ll just take it apart and make it work somehow. It will take a long time but worst case scenario it goes from a brick to a brick
Something happened when they moved to the vslam (i.e camera mapping) robots which made the software much harder to hack… you used to be able to use a serial cable to program them.
They used to encourage people to use a serial cable to program them. I remember when I got my Roomba nearly ten years ago, it came with a little pamphlet advertising their educational platform robot, which was basically a Roomba without the vacuum cleaning stuff. I think they intended it to be sort of the next step up from LEGO Mindstorm or something. But at the bottom of that pamphlet, there was a paragraph that basically said “hey you can get this educational robot, buuuut, the one you just bought has the exact same connections, firmware, to and hardware 👀👀👀”
You can root a lot of the earlier ones.
The alternatives are Chinese, or vacuum your own floors… Nobody wants to do that
I’ve got a Samsung that works just fine completely offline with no app. I don’t need some app to block it from going somewhere I just put some things in the way. Takes 3 minutes to prep for it driving around.
Works fine without the app.
Not if you want to schedule, edit the map, customize routines, etc
It’s still usable, it just reverts to the old school Roombas. Press clean to vacuum. Press dock to return to charger.
Pretty much inevitable. Nowadays there are so many robot vacuum cleaners from different brands, and everyone has more or less figured out the tech so they all work pretty well. (I have a Roborock, and have nothing to say about it other than it keeps the floors clean and doesn’t cause me any grief.) There’s no moat, so consumer market success is purely a matter of manufacturing and cost efficiency, and iRobot obviously would have a huge upfill fight against Samsung, Xiaomi, and a thousand other light consumer goods makers.
I bought a roborock Q Revo the other week, and it works great at vacuuming and mopping.
I changed its spoken language to Chinese though, to remind me who I’m living with.
I thought this was a funny gag, until I changed my router and wifi, and then had to update the robots wifi connection with all the voice prompts in chinese
i bought a roomba 2 years ago. It wasnt the cheapest, but it was the only company that isnt some cheap, chinese knockoff brand. American designed and operated still had some advantages for me at the time.
This was before USA plunged into facism though. Now i’m not sure what i would buy.
